Jason(Hao) Zheng

I have watched so many advertisements from different companies. Some of them  focus on introducing the functions of their products and services, while others are more intended to show their potential customers how their products and services will improve their lives.

However, HSBC’s advertisement leaves a deep impression in my mind because of the humorous effects of the ad.

HSBC’s ad changes my perspectives towards advertisements. It uses many scenarios in our daily lives and business occasions to clarify the culture difference triggers some misunderstandings between people. After that, HSBC introduces its own culture value:”HSBC: The World’s Local Bank”. The slogan means that HSBC is a international bank that provides customers with tailored banking services based on the understanding of different culture in different areas of the world. That advertisement introduces how HSBC achieve their culture value by saying that ” The HSBC will never underestimate the importance of local knowledge, that is the reason why we have local banks staffed by local people in over 80 countries across the globe.” That words are undoubtedly have a strong effect on positioning the HSBC brands as a international bank provide customers with services that especially designed for the region they live in.

That advertisement is perfect in my mind. Brief and strong slogan, funny scenarios, strong words perfectly shows customers their culture and value proposition.

Himalayan Pink Salt Caramels, the masterpiece that made by Purdy Chocolatier, becomes a hit in chocolate market. The most interesting point is how it uses an 100-year-old receipt to make an wonderful and refreshing flavour.

1. The Origins

“Our head chocolatier, Gary Mitchell, noticed a trend in the sweet and savoury category, and so he took a vanilla caramel recipe from 1907 and started to play with different salts and textures. He tried grey smoked salt and Cabernet salt, but landed on pink Himalayan salt, partly because of its story: It’s from the oldest salt mine in the world, it has 84 trace minerals, and it’s pink!”(1)

My Analysis: Differentiation Strategy Really Helps!!!

As we all know that most of the chocolates on shell are sweet. But Purdy Chocolatier’s Himalayan Pink Salt Caramels are different because of the salty taste, which will undoubtedly provide customers with a new and unique flavour on their tastebuds. What is more, the company claims that their salts are the purest one because all of them   are deposited in the Himalayan Mountains during the Jurassic era. Because of their ” Pure salts from Himalayan Mountains”, the company adds extra value to their product and leave a good ” salty chocolate” image to their customers, which differentiates their products from other chocolate makers.

2. Early Trials

“He applied the salt in different ways: baked in, infused, topped. Then he presented the caramels to our product development committee, which includes me and our chocolate scientist and president, Peter Higgins. If it passes the taste panel, we do a full batch in our test kitchen.”(2)

Their strict steps of experiments and tests aim at producing the best salty chocolate to achieve customers’ value proposition.

3. Moment Of Truth

“We put it into local shops to get customer feedback. We normally do a full costing and market evaluation to see whether the customer is willing to pay a price that will give us an acceptable margin, but ultimately, it’s the customer who decides.”(3)

After their experiments, their new chocolate should be tested by their customers. Purdy Chocolatier focus on customers’ feedback in order to make improvement based on the feedback and therefore provide them with the best chocolate. What is more, the company is strengthening the contact with their customers, which will maintain a good customers relationship and leave a good impression in customers’ minds.

4. Roll It Out

“Manufacturing in Vancouver is key to what we do. Because we use no preservatives, our product has a short shelf life. We can make everything here and have it shipped it to our 70 stores across the country the same week. If we manufactured anywhere else, we’d have to change the model completely.”(4)

The short shelf life is a big problem for the company because their products can not maintain for a long time. Therefore, the company must have high-speed delivery system. However, as the scale enlarges, I think they are supposed to allocate more manufacturing factories near to the markets. In that case, they can reduce their delivery cost and satisfy the larger markets’s needs punctually. What is more, it is necessary for the company to improve their technology to make products’ shelf life longer. For instance, they can try to improve their packing technology, like vacuumizing their chocolate to extend their shelf life.

Source:

(1)(2)(3)(4): http://www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/how-to/purdys-chocolatier-pink-salt-caramel-reinvention/

Pictures:

http://www.purdys.com/Himalayan-Pink-Salt-Caramels-P406.aspx

http://www.purdys.com/

This Tuesday is a special day for all of the Sauder students because some UBC alumni, who own their own business, came to Comm 101 class and told us their view about their own business, which are so impressive. From all of the alumni, I think Paul Davidescu, the founder of Tangoo, left the deepest impression in my mind.

Tangoo, an app that provides customers with tailored and seamless information about their social outing based on their mood and personal preference, creates a new perspective to satisfy customers’ value proposition.

This is how Tangoo works:Tangoo gather all the information about local restaurants online and provide their customers with specific locations, occasions, and price ranges of the restaurants. Therefore, customers are able to enjoy their social outings with an affordable price and nice mood.

Since Tangoo is just a start-up company, there are many problems to be solved.

The app just covers information of local restaurants in 4 cities: Vancouver, Toronto, Whistler and Montreal. The limited information   can’t meet customers’ needs in other areas, which means that large potential markets are undiscovered. In that case, Paul can try to expand the scale of the company by increasing the number of employees and pay more attention on collecting data from the internet, because most of the information on the internet are free.

However, hiring more people to work for Tangoo means a higher cost. I think Paul can talk to owners of the local restaurants and try to persuade them to invest the app. Because Tangoo is trying to spread the information about restaurants, if the owners invest in Tangoo and help Tangoo to enlarge their influence, their own influence will increase and more profit will be gained. That is a win-win policy!!!

Source:

All the photos: https://tangoo.ca

Tangoo: https://tangoo.ca

China has become the hoop-crazed country after Yao Ming, the 7″6 big guy, joined the Houston Rockets in 2001. Since then, NBA gained a huge popularity and increasing profit in China and China becomes the biggest overseas market for NBA.

However, when Yao Ming announced  his retirement in 2011, many people were worried that their biggest oversea market will shrink.  Surprisingly, the market didn’t shrink at all and grow in an amazing speed instead.

“China is our number one market outside of the United States,” Heidi Ueberroth, president of NBA International, told Reuters. “The growth has been very significant and very much on track, and we are very much still just scratching the surface.”  

Because of their shrewd business strategies,  Chinese market is the “big pie” even a “bigger pie” after Yao’s retirement.

NBA marketers keep using star power to attract more target customers in China. They are not only selling the NBA brand but also selling the Star image to Chinese basketball fans. They are always trying to tell their customers in China that there are more basketball stars in NBA after Yao’s retirement, like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant.

In order to expand their influence in China, the NBA stars are coming to China to play pre-season games.  That means that a large amount of basket ball fans in China will buy the games’ tickets and make contributions to NBA’s total profit. What’s more, the games held in China also build the connections between Chinese fans and NBA stars and has a positive effect on selling sub-products, like NBA stars’ basketball sneakers and jerseys.

In order to gain bigger popularity in China, NBA even decided to adjust their schedule and time for China and Asian market. In that case, the schedule is not only for China but for the entire Asian continent and therefore drastically increase their followers not only in China but also other asian countries.

Apple launched its new function: Apple Pay on October 20th, an e-commerce product that worked with their new IPhone 6, IPhone 6plus, Ipad Air 2 and the upcoming product, I-watch. This new function, which is supported by the NFC chips in new IPhones and Ipads, is transferring consumers’ purchasing ways. According to the introductions on Mac-rumors, people will be able to make a purchase with their finger prints instead of their cash and bank cards. What is more, Apple Pay will become the impetus that move mainstream customers to digital payments.

Due to change the triggered by the Apple Pay,  I think that more companies are supposed to reconsider their segmentations for the new digital payment consumers.

Actually, there are several kinds of consumers(segments) that hold different attitudes towards the new change in payment method. The first group of people are those who can’t afford or unwilling to use the digital devices because of their low incomes and salaries. This groups of people are not target customers because they aren’t able to buy devices and so as the Apple Pay function.

Another group of consumers are loyal fans, they are more likely to follow the trends and buy the new products because companies have already left good impressions in their minds. What we need to do is just showing them the benefits of buying the new products and the value of each interaction. In that case, they will buy it. However, failure to deliver the fantastic experience described in the ads may triggers the loss of customers’ loyalty because of the poor customer impression.

The last group of consumers are those who are paranoid about the safety of their personal profile and data. In that case, the security of their personal information should be guaranteed. And companies should try to convince them that their data can be used to make their life more convenient.

The important point that companies should pay attention to is that they should make all their customers’ data transparent. Try to explain to their customers that how their data will be used and why they should be used.

Because of the different segmentations of target customers, companies should tailor the user’s experiences and specific needs in different segmentation groups.

Apple Pay Video

Source: 

The introduction about Apple Pay on Mac-rumor: http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-pay/

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZkehaeDwa4

The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Program, which will allow two pipes from Alberta to Kitimat, BC, is strong opposed by inhabitants from First Nation. Because they claim that the program triggers environmental problems and hurts the biodiversity and conventions. This external environment (the protest from the First Nation people) sets blocks to the economical development in the area.

According to the oppositions from First Nation inhabitants, the official government lists five conditions (1)and emphasizes that “World-leading marine oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems” will effectively prevent potential danger, like oil spilling, from happening. However, based on previous oil spilling accident that occurred years ago, I don’t think they can be responsible for the the further nature destructions. Who will trust them due to the previous accident???

The official government also points out several benefits of the program（2）, which are seemingly reasonable. Even though the pipeline program can facilitates the economical boom in the area and provide huge benefits and better infrastructure and even better education to the First Nations people, I don’t think it is reasonable for them to accept the conditions.

The huge benefits are unsustainable because they need to sacrifice their natural resources, which can not be replaced in a short time. What’s more, the better infrastructure and education may assimilate their conventional cultures to the modern ones, which is like a potential danger of their conventional culture.

Based on all these factors, the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Program has a long way to go to convince the people from First Nation to cooperate with them.

Source:

(1)http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/Five-Conditions.aspx

(2）http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/Benefits/Benefits-To-BC.aspx

Rodrigo Rajes’s blog gives me some enlightening ideas about Apple’s core value to stand out in the extremely competitive smart devices market.

Apple is undoubtedly the pioneer in the smart devices industry because of its iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. Their products really change our lives. After Apple releases their products, most of us find out that our lives become really inconvenient if we don’t use them. Why do we think so? This is an interesting question.

Apple is devoting themselves to positioning an image in customer’s mind: Apple is a revolutionized smart devices innovator that is “seeking to transfer the way we work, learn, create and share”. Because Apple is the first company to declare this concept in public, customers will undoubtedly put Apple at top of  their “mind ladders”. What a wise positioning!

Because simplicity is Apple’s core value, apple is always working on it. Their advertisements about their new products are often shown in simple ways: the functions of their new products are demonstrated in a white or black background by hands. In my opinion, the simply advertisements are so clear that they can convey the information about their new products directly to their customers’ mind. Therefore, I think Apple’s ads are better than that from other competitors, like Samsung, who are more likely to use pop stars as their spokesmen.

The simplicity ideas are also perfectly unfold before our eyes in their products. For example, iPhone has a simple design with a home button, power button and 3 other buttons. Their software and systems are extremely simple and easy to use in comparison to other Android devices.

Even though Apple ‘s innovation pace becomes slower these days, their core value is still contributing to their success in the smart devices market.

In Tim Martiniak’s blog(1), I found great remarks on unethical business problems of AUDI 2010 Green Car Super Bowl Commercial(2). Firstly, I have to admit that the advertisement is so funny that it catches my eyes. But after I read through Tim’s comment about the advertisement, I became rational and viewed it in a more critical perspective.

The advertisement is undoubtedly interesting and witty because of the green-police story. It aims at giving their target customers, who have a sense of environment protection, a image that Audi’s cars are miraculously eco-friendly. However, does it really make sense? Or it is just a kind of exaggeration?

I can’t judge the environmental-friendly functions of Audi’s “green” diesel cars simply by the advertisement. Because the advertisement is just trying to explain that Audi’s “green” diesels are extremely clean and environmentally-friendly but it never tells us more information about how their products are green, how do their cars work to have a green performance? It seems that Audi is trying to hide something about their “green” functions. In that case, I am suspicious that the company is using the so-called “eco-friendly” products and the exaggerated effects of their advertisement purposely to attract more potential customers in order to gain huge profit from the market. The advertisement itself is unethical commercial behaviour because of the deceptive effects in customers.

I think car companies are supposed to provide consumers with real “green” products instead of the ones in advertisement. What’s more, the advertisement should be honest to the functions of their cars and tell customers the real information about their products instead of illusions. Government should take actions to set laws and policies to publish those companies that tell wrong information to consumers and set a strict standard to the commercial ethics.

source:

(1)https://blogs.ubc.ca/timmartiniak/2013/09/22/greenwashing-diesel/

(2)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIz-su6ueoI

Actually, HTC’s smartphones are outstanding in my mind because of its metal design and high-speed chips. Even though HTC has one of the best products in smartphone industry, it is faced with serious problem like declining revenue, insufficient sales and low profit. The Bloomberg shows:” HTC’s first-quarter net income plunged 98 percent to NT$85 million ($2.8 million), the sixth straight decline, according to data released by the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company yesterday.” In my point of view, there are several factors that trigger the consecutive decline in profit

In 2013, HTC released its flagship product HTC One m7, a revolutionary smartphone to the public and the new flagship left a deep impression in consumers’ mind. However, in the following months their supply chains could not satisfy customers’ needs because of the shortage of their resources. Thus, thousands of customers will not receive HTC”s smartphones as they comes out, even though they are willing to pay for the products. In that case, consumers will choose other smartphones that have similar functions like Samsung and iPhone. Due to the inefficient supply chain, HTC lost market shares. In 2014, HTC improved their supply chain, but the previous failure leaves a negative impression on customers mind. And customers will not choose HTC’s products because they don’t believe that HTC can meet their needs.

Base on my experience of using the HTC One, I think HTC should focus on their crossing- selling strategies. In comparison to Samsung, HTC cares little about their multiple products. It is quite hard to find HTC’s accessories of their smartphones like protectors, earphones, batteries. These accessories can provide the companies with huge profits and large amount of potential customers. Thus, HTC loses market shares in the accessories market

Marketing is of vital importance in the competitive cellphone market. Obviously, HTC concentrates too much on their product designs and pay less attention to their marketing and selling product images to customers. There are less HTC branch stores in comparison to Apple and Samsung, which means that costumers are less likely to see and touch its products directly and give customers an image that their smartphones are convenient to use. What’s more, HTC should allocate more money to make more influential advertisements to show the points of difference of their products instead of the advertisement that just introduce the points of parity.

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